A little progress over the past couple of days, I got ahold of some marine heat shrink and "fixed" the throttle cable. It's not perfect but it should at least get the car on the road. I also got the parts car wiring harness pulled, meaning i should be able to get the harness(s) sent off to Erik by the end of the week

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Little Saturday project was getting the old battery location filled up. By no means is that corner of the car going to be winning any awards, but it'll do its job and that's what matters. Tomorrow I'll try and finish the under-the-spare battery




I didn't post it, but earlier this week I also finished putting in the passenger side decklid hinge.




I also pulled the cruise box from a LQ1 Monte Carlo, can anyone confirm or deny if that's the correct cruise box to put into a fiero? I've read that the northstar cruise box is the best, but haven't made a pick and pull run since I've read that. tia!

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

I made the decision to go with stainless fuel lines, and I couldn't have been happier. I think i was a little over $100 and i just put on most of the fittings in about 30 minutes.











I also got the wiring harnesses sent off to Erik to have the harness put together by someone you knows the difference between a blue with a yellow stripe wire and yellow with a blue strip wire. So everything should be done and ready to go by the time the harness gets back in my hands

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Little bit of progress over the last few days. I've started to figure out the wiring harness plug by plug, it's slow but steady progress on that front. I've pulled the heads from my donor motor for someone who wants to build a flow testing rig on Saturday, but I hung onto them over the weekend just so I can study them a little in case something happens down the line. Slightly unrelated but I got a time-lapse of pulling the heads and I think I'm going to start filming more of what i do for fun




The other reason I went up to the parts car was to snag the lower plenum as i discovered a crack in the one I originally planned on using. So a little sandblasting and some high temp paint and I was back to where I started.





I also finished the fuel lines, I don't know why I didn't do this originally. I just made two 5' lines as that seems like it might have a chance at possibly being in the ballpark of being close to what the would be if I lined things up in the engine bay like I planned.




A small project side project was obtaining a injector plug spring clip thing. I found that the fiero and the LQ1 springs were very similar, so with a little help from a vice and a little persuasion I made one that works surprisingly well. Bottom is stock fiero, top is the "new" LQ1




I got everything bolted together for a quick pick pic showing what the engine will look like. I would clean up some of the hoses and still have some wires that aren't hooked up, But it gives me a glimmer of hope seeing everything coming together



I'm having Erik work on the wiring harness for me, so that will help speed up the process from if I was making the harness.

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Today was mostly buttoning up loose ends and putting things on for the "Final time". The biggest item on the list was finally finishing the battery relocation. It didn't even take that long to do, like 30 minutes tops. I still need to toss a strap to hold it down for when i decide to let all those screaming eagles (7 more horse power then stock) loose.






Everything else revolved around the engine bay. I got the fuel lines hooked up, the coolant reservoir tank hooked up, all the coolant line ran (apart from one that needs to be put after the motor), and the brake booster vacuum line in place.





Oh, I did prep the motor for the slight rainfall we might be getting over the next few nights. Nothing special just plugging spark plug wholes and tossing on the upper plenum (post picture)




I'm hoping to have this all finished all before winter, but I may have to toss up an easy up or two if the rain gets a little too heavy. I'm hoping to have everything %100 ready for when the harness gets into my grubby hands. I'm glad Erik's still got some skin in the game, otherwise this would probably have a 2024 completion date.

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Repeat it with me everyone, "The project is never done, there is always something else you could do". Realizing that i'm running the stock air intake, I decided it was in my best interest to improve the stock intake that i'm reusing. The biggest part that I've seen people make improvements on is the intake into the air can. So I got the old one all cut out tonight, and started getting the arms for the nut fabbed up. A trip to Ace tomorrow and a couple little tack welds and it should help the engine breath a tad better.






The other thing I did today was get the charcoal canister mount mounted up along with the cruise box. I don't recall what vehicle I pulled the cage from but it was a minivan with a 3100 and the stock LQ1 cruise box is what I'm going with. Still need to get that connector all wired up and done but that can be at a later date if things run long.






I'm running to the junk yard to snag some generic GM connectors to retro fit the 91 harness I'm using onto the 97(?) motor tomorrow, as well as snag a fancy new three piece center console skeleton so I don't have to tear my car down to the frame to work on the shifter. Goodnight Y'all

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Original plan was to make a bomb trip to Vegas to help a body out and make a little coin on the side but that fell through. Decided to finish up the air box and get some parts ordered for the finishing touches. Should be able to plug off the exhaust manifold by tomorrow night.






I also got a hold of 3d printed center console from Matt so I started resembling the interior of the car which is nice to be putting things together for once. Would 100% recommend the new center console skeleton, the brass threads make everything so much nicer and I can just pull off certain pieces for access instead of tearing the interior down to the frame.




Tomorrow should be a pretty chill day (knock on wood). Just need to get the manifolds plugged up

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

Slightly off topic, but got to go to my first concourse and couldn't be happier. Stand out would have to be e real 440 4 speed Dodge Daytona, talked with the owner and he has a legendary car from every american manufacture in his fleet (Boss 429, Yanko Camero #13, Dodge Daytona, and the list goes on). Another stand out would be a Gorgeous yellow De Tomso Pantera (dream car of mine). Last cool thing I'm going to list (I promise) was a 197,XXX mile Tracked 355, always makes my day seeing high millage collectors cars.






Now back to the regularly scheduled programming. Today's project was getting the EGR and the factory O2 blocked off. For the EGR I have to be a little strategic as I need to have the option to install the EGR tube at a later date. But the way the EGR is laid out it has outer threads then a step down then into the manifold. So I found that I could use the whole to tap in some 14-1.5 threads on that step down part. While the threads are A-OK, I'm not satisfied with my bolt choice so tomorrow I'll find a better bolt/washer combo and really check off the boc next to this part of the project.





The O2 sensor is being relocated for the sake of trunk clearance, so I'm ok to do whatever it takes to fill the hole. The O2 is very close to 3/4-16, but no cigar. So I drilled out and re-tapped that whole to just fit in a 3/4-16 bolt that was shortened as to not block any airflow in a set of already restrictive manifolds. I also had to round off the bolt I was using for clearance sake.





I forget if I listed it above or not, but I got all the missing connectrs and sent them off the Erik for the harness.
-Project ETA 2-3 Weeks-

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-

[This message has been edited by fliphone (edited 10-01-2023).]

First update in a minute, and its not exactly part of the swap but I'm tossing it in anyway. I pulled the gauge cluster(s) from the donor car to make them the white faces along with reset the Odo for the swap. It took my ape brain a minute to figure out how to actually roll back the Odo and I broke the plastic piece that holds all the little slider dudes in place, but getting it back in it's home i'm pretty sure it won't hurt anything (I hope). The white faces took a couple of tries to get everything lined up but I'm happy with how it turned out.








I'm not gonna put this onto the car quite yet, as if something cluster related doesn't work then I'll know it's not the cluster as the one in the car worked great. Once that's all tied up then this'll be one of the first things I do post-swap

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Black 88 GT, a 19 year old here about 20 years to late
-LQ1 Swap in progress-